Deeply wounded, yes, but she could yet be a great political survivor
NoTHING would have been easier than for Theresa May to have chucked in the towel as the full scale of the Tory election debacle struck home in the small hours of yesterday morning.
Mrs May looked utterly miserable when she turned up for her count in her Maidenhead constituency just after 3 am.
She knew she had made a terrible mistake in calling a general election. She knew she had run an incompetent campaign.
She knew that most of her political authority has gone. She knew that bitter recriminations were under way, and that there were calls for her to quit.
All this could be seen in the Prime Minister’s face and body language. If she were a boxer, she would have been all but out for the count.
Indeed, it would have been understandable if, like David Cameron after the Brexit referendum, she had chosen to give up and walk away.
And yet by a commanding effort of extraordinary will and courage — and after talking at length to husband Philip — Mrs May pulled herself together.
As she returned to Westminster from her constituency, the exhausted Prime Minister talked to close advisers. There followed a crucial private conversation with one of her most trusted Cabinet colleagues, Brexit minister David Davis. They weighed the options and assessed the odds. In the words of a friend, ‘he shored her up’.
So it was that the 60-year- old Prime Minister resolved to stay on as leader of a minority government, more for the sake of the country and the Tory party than for herself. Friends say that she realised the alternative was to leave Britain rudderless over the summer as rivals battled for the Tory leadership, and the cut off date for Brexit negotiations to end in 2019 drew ever closer.
Now, Mrs May plans to take charge, regain her authority and personally see through Brexit. But she surely knows that will not be easy: in my assessment it may not even be possible.
The first problem she faces is an unprecedented breakdown in relations with her Cabinet. Details have been seeping out in recent days of Mrs May’s isolation from mutinous ministers. Many of them have been treacherously briefing against her to try to bring her down.
‘The Prime Minister will only take a call from the Queen,’ says one hostile insider. He says all other calls are screened by her two senior aides, Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy. Even Chancellor Philip Hammond can only access the Prime Minister through one of these two guardians, who treat him with open contempt. I have been told, for instance, that Mr Timothy uses obscene language to describe the Chancellor in front of senior officials.
In return Mr Hammond has reportedly been keeping a private record of his dealings with Downing Street, and even encouraging other Cabinet ministers to do the same.
And yesterday, he was said to have challenged Mrs May face-toface over a series of briefings against him during the campaign.
For weeks now, Mr Hammond has told friends that he expected to be sacked after the election, and there is little doubt Mrs May would dearly love to do just that.
But sacking the Chancellor carries a potential fatal cost. In the words of one senior Tory, ‘She is well aware that Mr Hammond could do to her what Geoffrey Howe did to Margaret Thatcher’ — referring to the 1990 resignation speech which is regarded as having precipitated her downfall.
Philip Hammond, who was ruthlessly excluded from election campaigning, is not the only minister who has been repeatedly snubbed by Mrs May. Many complain that they have been left out of decision-making. Even at 10.30 yesterday morning, for example, I was told Mrs May had not been in touch with her top ministers, and there was no talk of a Cabinet meeting to discuss the election calamity and future strategy.
Meanwhile, pressure is growing on Mrs May to sack Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill. I am told that some very senior ministers are insisting Mrs May takes this course of action as a condition of staying in office.
But there is genuine concern that the Prime Minister depends so heavily on her advisers as a psychological crutch that she may be unable to shed them.
Can she survive on her own? From what I hear, she will have no choice but to do so. This pair are being hung out to dry for the election shambles. Meanwhile, many MPs make no secret of their fury and despair at the Prime Minister’s handling of the election.
That, then, was the nature of the political crisis in No 10 last night as the Tory Party came to terms with the catastrophe.
one thing is certain. For Mrs May to survive, she will have to completely change the way she manages the Cabinet and her inner team.
There are as yet no signs that she is capable of doing so.
Meanwhile, there are deep doubts over whether she is able to run a minority government — the situation into which she has been thrust following the loss of 12 seats in Thursday’s election.
Some prime ministers have successfully managed such administrations, for example Jim Callaghan between 1976-79. But to make such arrangements work well, prime ministers need to be avuncular, relaxed, flexible and charming.
Unclubbable Mrs May was often a formidable operator as Home Secretary, but she is yet to display such qualities as premier.
Like Ted Heath — who also, as Prime Minister, called an election which went disastrously wrong — Mrs May suffers from being a remote character.
That means she enters the most testing months of her political career without many genuine allies, at a time when she needs all the support she can muster. It will be very lonely. But she is tough, experienced and determined.
Theresa May has been set on becoming Prime Minister ever since she was a teenager. Having been in Downing Street for just 330 days, she will not want to go down in history as the shortest-lived Tory Prime Minister since Andrew Bonar Law lasted just 209 days a century ago.
HAPPILY, there are some powerful factors on her side. She is still leader of Britain’s largest party by some distance, with 318 seats.
Along with the Democratic Unionist Party, Mrs May’s Tories command a majority in parliament. That gives her a constitutional and moral right to stay on and govern from 10 Downing Street.
Furthermore, Mrs May has not done as badly as some critics are claiming. When I last looked yesterday afternoon, she had obtained 13,650,900 votes and rising — more than the 13,518,000 obtained by Tony Blair in his famous 1997 landslide, and two million more than her predecessor David Cameron secured in his famous but ill-fated 2015 general election triumph.
Perhaps Mrs May enjoyed a false popularity in her early months as Prime Minister.
From now on, life will be a struggle. There will be defeats in the Commons, betrayals, defections, moments of despair. But there will also, I predict, be triumphs.
I cannot say how long Mrs May will last. I don’t think she will lead the Tory Party into another election, since she’s a proven failure as a campaigner. yet she can carry on for months, even years. She might face a leadership challenge, but there is little sign that the Tory Party or the country want that.
Mrs May is badly hurt. She has lessons to learn, and needs to learn them fast.
But if she does so, she just might go down in history as one of the great political survivors. British politics has been turned on its head over the past few days, but for a wounded and hurt Theresa May, it’s still all to play for.